AS Coursework Reflection: Using Conventions from Real Media Texts

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

We wanted to conform to conventions of the horror genre toe ensure the audience relates and enjoys it. To conform to conventions, we had a female character as the victim. The character conformed to conventions where she is completely oblivious to her surroundings, making her vulnerable. Our use of music throughout and little dialogue is also conventional as it ensures increased tensions due to the minor key in which it is in. We also conformed to conventions through the use of special effects makeup and overall story of the killer.

However, we challenged conventions by having a murder within the first opening scene of the film. This is unusual as you don't get much insight into the characters lives beforehand and so don't have much information on why they get killed. The school setting is also unusual as only teenagers can really relate to it, leaving a somewhat smaller target audience of current and recent students. These are some things we might consider changing or emphasising in future projects.

Is your work generic or experimental, or both?

Our work is quite conventional and generic of the horror genre as we wanted to attract a typical audience to watch it. Using elements such as typical, spooky music and little dialogue helped us to increase tensions and make our film more conventional and generic of the horror genre. Some elements, such as the unusual setting and murder at the beginning are quite experimental as they're quite unconventional of the genre - meaning it could have been a bad idea or a good idea. 

Have you developed a style? Have you been influenced by the work of specific directors etc.?

I don't believe we have developed much of a style as our film was quite generic and very similar to other horror films. We made our film quite generic as it meant we could use conventions to make our film more realistic and more enjoyable to a typical target audience. We didn't have much influence from specific directors, however we looked at quite a few horror films, such as 'Scream', to get an idea of the types of things we wanted to include in our film. 

AS Coursework Reflection: Post-Production

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

From our audience feedback, we learned that our target audience felt we used makeup and sound effectively to add to the tension of our film. However, we also found out that the audience felt we could have used camera shots better to enable the audience to find out more about the characters and their relation to each other within the film. The audience also said about possibly choosing a different location to make the film more realistic. These are things we are going to take on this year and improve upon. 

What editing decisions were made? How did they inform the production? What particular editing tools were used and to what effect?

When it came to editing the footage, we had a pretty clear idea of how we wanted our final film to look. Editing the footage involved quite a lot of cutting and rearranging different scenes to make sure the film flowed well and looked professional. In some cases, we had to cut out parts entirely or cross cut different scenes to make the film look better, which is something we didn't expect to have to do after seeing the footage. In some scenes, we used transitions and effects to improve the look of the film and this was effective in improving how the audience viewed it and their overall opinion of the film.

How did the post-production process enhance the overall production?

Editing the footage together and adding in titles and transitions was effective in enhancing our production as it meant that our film ultimately looked more professional. Adding these also meant the film had heightened tensions which added to the horror conventions within the film. Adding in different types of music also helped us to increase the tension and make our film better as we had little dialogue and it helped to hide background noise.

AS Coursework Reflection: Research and Planning

What audiences did you look at? How did this inform your thinking about your media production?

We looked at typical audiences of horror films to inform where we needed to aim our film. By looking at typical audiences, we were able to incorporate ideas which would attract and please certain age groups and genders, for example, our film was aimed at teenagers, which is why we intended to use props like the phone, in order to ensure the audience could relate to the characters. We also did a couple of questionnaires aimed at our peers, to make sure our film was relatable and targeted at the right audience.

How did you record all the research?

We recorded all of our research on Blogger as a way of accessing it all in one place. Blogger was very useful for this as it meant we could upload images and videos as well as write about our experiences throughout the course. We recorded our research in different ways on Blogger, through videos and pictures - such as for the questionnaires and location research - but also we managed to write a lot about what we planned to do with everything and what we had found would be effective to include in our film.

What primary and secondary research was undertaken? How did it inform the production and how effective were these kinds of research?

We used statistics from other films about target audience and classic genre conventions to make sure our film was targeted correctly. This was secondary research and was effective as it was easy to find and apply to our situation. We created some of our own questionnaires to look at current trends with teenagers. This also enabled us to target our film correctly and these gave us an insight into other teenagers and their likes and dislikes. This was primary research and was effective as it meant we could find our own research and ask specific questions to get the exact answers we desired. 

What quantitative and qualitative analysis methods were employed? How did the results from these inform the production and how effective were these kinds of research?

We created an initial ideas questionnaire right at the beginning in order to see what people thought of our ideas, in which we counted up how many people liked certain ideas about the film. This was quantitative research as it followed numerical data and was effective in showing us clear percentages of the favourite and least favourite ideas. This influenced the types of things we used in our final film, as we wanted it to appeal to this type of audience. We also created a questionnaire as part of our evaluation at the end of the year. This was qualitative as it used a more traditional market research approach to find our what lifestyles people had and what things they liked. This was effective as it gave us clear answers about people in our sixth form who would be a part of our target audience, by asking more open-ended lifestyle questions.

How effectively were storyboards/shot lists/script followed?

We made sure to follow our plans quite carefully. We didn't have much of a script as most of the opening had no dialogue in it, however, we had some idea of what we wanted certain characters to say and we kept very close to this original idea. Our storyboard and shot lists was very important to us as it outlined our combined ideas, however, we faltered a bit from these as we might have found better ways of filming on the day or location changes meant we had to edit how we were originally going to film the shots. 

AS Coursework Reflection: Creativity

How did you use media forms to come up with something new and original?

We did a lot of research of other films and media forms in the horror genre, before coming up with our own story. We picked out the conventions we wanted to include in some way in our film, as we had seen that they worked well in other films and heightened tensions within the film, which is what we wanted to achieve. We used our environment around us to influence the story however, we used props, makeup, camera shots and overall setting to make it look new and exciting whilst sticking to a tried-and-tested, successful genre.

Where did ideas come from and how did you work collaboratively to share ideas?

We collectively shared ideas in order to gather and intertwine different things that we liked and disliked to come up with an idea that we were both confident and excited to film and put together. We worked well together as we managed to combine bits of ideas to create the final film. As well as our own ideas, ideas came from people and things around us as they influenced the decisions we made, as well as encouraging us to use more to enhance the film. Ideas also came from other films, as they influenced the conventions of the genre in which we were making our film.

How did you change things?

Whilst filming, many things meant that we had to change our original plan. The main issue was our time frame  and the sun fading quickly, which limited our location which in turn meant we had to change our whole story and change how and when we were going to film it.

How did you use tools like Adobe Premiere Elements to achieve something imaginative? What stylistic technologies were used to appeal to the audience?

We used Adobe Premiere Elements to create our final film. Within the software we used effects such as fading in and out as well as to cut and paste clips in different places to increase the tension in it.  We used transitions between some of the clips to make it flow better as a film, but we also used effects on the titles to make sure they came in smooth to not distract from the film and add to the genre conventions. Using transitions and effects helped to appeal to the audience as it made our film flow well and enhanced the conventions we had included into the film. This made the film look more professional and exciting, increasing the ability to attract an audience to watch it.

What was the intended outcome of the production? How were these achieved in terms of page layout and camera shot choices (conventions)?

We wanted to make an effective horror opening for a film. We feel we used effective camera shots, most of which are conventional of the horror genre. This meant our film looked well put together as we had many choices of shot to use to create the right mood for the particular scene we were filming. Our favourite conventional camera shot we used was the mirror shot in the bathroom right at the end. This was one of our favourites as we think we framed it really well and that it looked very professional for the scene it was in. This shot, and the cross-cutting  to follow, were able to increase the tension ready for the final cliffhanger of the opening. 

AS Coursework Reflection: Digital Technology

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

During the research and planning stages, we used many websites such as Google and YouTube to research the genre we wanted our film to be in. We used Blogger to track the progress and our research as a way of presenting our findings and inspiration for our film. We used programmes such as Microsoft PowerPoint and Microsoft Word to make drafts of our posts and script etc. but also to create mind maps that we could then upload to Blogger for things like audience research. We used a video camera and a DSLR camera during the filming and to take character and location pictures as well as to capture our filming days. To construct our film, we used Adobe Premiere Elements, which enabled us to make our film look quite professional. We used Blogger to evaluate our final film and the aspects we thought to be particularly good. We also used YouTube to add annotations and complete a voice-over commentary to show how and why we chose to film our film or edit it in a certain way.

What software was used? Pros and Cons?

For our AS film, we used Adobe Premiere Elements to put the film together and we used Blogger to document our research and progress throughout. The Adobe software allowed us to make our film the way we wanted to and make it look quite professional by using effects and music. However, the software sometimes crashed, meaning we had to re-do some parts of the editing where unsaved scenes had been erased. Tracking our progress on Blogger enabled us to follow how we wanted the film to look and how close we were to achieving it. It also enabled us to see which shot types we wanted to use and to lay out all of our research on filming and props etc. in one place. We also used websites such as YouTube to get non-copyright music to add to our film. Finding music that fitted our film was a bit tricky as we wanted to make sure it would heighten tensions and make our film seem more professional but YouTube enabled us to find lots of versions of music that we could pick from and cut to fit our film. 

What equipment was used? Pros and Cons?

We used a video camera and a tripod to film the scenes, but we also used a regular DSLR camera to take photos of the filming in order to track and add them to our blog pages. The video camera and tripod were not that hard to use as we had both used cameras and tripods before, however, we did have to think more carefully about how we were going to frame the scenes and what we eventually wanted the full film to look like. We had someone take photos of the filming days with a DSLR camera so that we could later look back on what we had filmed and how we had set everything up. This made sure we were following the continuity rules we had researched to make our film look professional and flow better. 

In what ways was technology used to create the production?

We used technology in all aspects of creating the film - from actually filming it to editing it all together. We used hardware technology to film the scenes and used software technology to edit and add music to make it look professional. Using technology meant that it was easier to film the scenes and import them to the computer but also to cut and edit the clips exactly where and how we wanted. 

In what ways did the technology constrain or enable the production to be developed?

Technology enabled our production as it made much of the cutting and editing easier to complete and change if we weren't happy. It made it much easier to import the clips from the camera as well as find music to put into it. The video camera was able to hold lots of clips so that we could do the same scene from many different angles to decide which worked best later in editing. However, the software sometimes crashed which meant we had to re-do the editing we were working on during that particular lesson, which put us behind a bit in the editing, therefore slightly constraining the production.